Joshua Rowan Thorpe
Academic Degree:
PhDProfessional Category:
FCT Researcher
Research group: LanCog
I am a philosopher working at the University of Lisbon, where I hold an FCT fellowship. Before arriving here I worked at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Stirling, Lingnan University, and the University of Campinas. I did my PhD at the St Andrews and Stirling Joint Program in Philosophy.
I am primarily an epistemologist, but I find that thinking about epistemology often leads to thinking about philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. I am also interested in feminist philosophy, which also often ends up with me thinking about mind and language.
My current research project is on internal world scepticism. Traditionally, epistemologists see scepticism as a problem concerning our knowledge of the external world, while (at least some of) our knowledge of our own minds is scepticism-free. I think that this is wrong, and that there is a serious problem of internal world scepticism. And I think that appreciation of this problem sheds light on what would count as a good solution to the original external world sceptical problem, the nature of self-knowledge, and the importance of self-ignorance.
My personal webpage is https://www.joshuarowanthorpe.
Email contact: jthorpe@edu.ulisboa.pt
Selected Publications
Forthcoming. “Disquotation and Silence” in Chackraborty (ed) A Companion to Hilary Putnam, Wiley-Blackwell.
2025 (With Jesper Kallestrup) “Genuine Generalism: Conspiracy Theories and Epistemic Authority.” Synthese 206, 278.
2023 “External World Scepticism and Self Scepticism” Philosophical Studies 180, pp. 591–607.
2022 “Merely Superficially Contingent A Priori Knowledge and the McKinsey Paradox” Synthese 200/38.
2022 (With Crispin Wright) “Putnam’s Proof Revisited” James Conant and Sanjit Chakraborty (editors), Engaging Putnam. De Gruyter.
2018 “Semantic Self-Knowledge and the Vat Argument” Philosophical Studies 176/9, pp. 2289-2306.
2017 “Closure Scepticism and the Vat Argument” Mind 127/507, pp. 667-690.
2017 “Radical Interpretation, Scepticism, and the Possibility of Shared Error” Synthese 196/8, pp. 3355–3368.
2022 “Merely Superficially Contingent A Priori Knowledge and the McKinsey Paradox” Synthese 200/38.
2022 (With Crispin Wright) “Putnam’s Proof Revisited” James Conant and Sanjit Chakraborty (editors), Engaging Putnam. De Gruyter.
2018 “Semantic Self-Knowledge and the Vat Argument” Philosophical Studies 176/9, pp. 2289-2306.
2017 “Closure Scepticism and the Vat Argument” Mind 127/507, pp. 667-690.
2017 “Radical Interpretation, Scepticism, and the Possibility of Shared Error” Synthese 196/8, pp. 3355–3368.